Comments

Patrick:

Wow, this is really striking. And I suspect it's pretty accurate. In addition to being way too long and drawn out, the nominating process so far (for both parties, but especially the Dems of course) has been so overtly negative, made even more so by the tone of the national media coverage.

Even though this poll shows a slightly worse positive/negative for Clinton and McCain than Obama, I think the news here is the worst for Obama. Everyone knows McCain and Clinton by now. They're both fully vetted and they've both been in the public eye and closely scrutinized for 15+ years. Obama is a "fresh face" that people are just getting to know. I'm shocked, frankly, that his negatives are already so high. And this is before the Rezko trial has really started and the Repubicans crucify him between Aug. and Nov. It doesn't bode well for him in the general election at all.

You should become a professional spinner for the Clinton campaign. Using buzzwords like "shocked" and "Rezko" and "fully vetted", you probably don't even know what you're talking about.

The past two weeks have seen a firestorm of negative media for Obama, and the fact that his "negative" ratings are STILL below Clinton's and basically EVEN with McCain's (all within the margin of error of course) is what is most "shocking" to me.

Drop the "oh my gosh I'm so surprised, Obama is going to get CREAMED in the general" routine. Everyone can see right through it.

I wasn't kidding. I genuinely am surprised to see Obama's negatives so high. I was under the impression that they were much lower than Clinton's. The 'fresher' candidates almost always have much lower negatives. And "vetting" is not necessarily a positive term; it just means we know a lot more about her and McCain simply because they've been in the public eye much longer. I do support Clinton, but not because I "like" her. I don't really "like" any of them. It's because a) I honestly think she'd be the best president (but I think they'd both be good in different ways); b) we know what we're getting; c) the Republicans aren't going to be able to find anything "new" of much significance about her; d) she's likely to run better in OH, PA, and FL, the 3 states that decide elections now; and most importantly, e) she knows how to fight back and her people know how to win elections. I worked for Michael Dukakis in 1988 (not for his campaign; in his office) and I got a front row seat for what happens to candidates that the public doesn't know very well in a general election. The other party is able to 'define' them to the public. That's how Dukakis went from being 18 pts ahead in Aug. 88 to losing overwhelmingly (electorally at least) in Nov. This is exactly what's likely to happen to Obama at the hands of the Republican party (who will be desperate to hold on to the WH) and esp. the 527 groups. The ammo they have on Obama already (coupled with ingrained racism in the key swing states) will make the Willie Horton or Swift Boat attacks look tame in comparison. Mark my words.

From what I can tell, the demographics of this poll reflect the general adult population. That would be quite different from the demographics of likely voters, right? If so, is this poll a good predictor of the election results?

From what I've seen Patrick, or someone else posting with that name, is a strong Clinton supporter and has been for some time. There's nothing wrong with that, but it does inform our perception of his comments. Furthermore he has changed his arguments for her candidacy in a relatively lock step fashion with the memes being touted by Clinton's campaign. Again, there is nothing wrong with this, he may well be convinced by their arguments.
Patrick, I will say that your case would be much stronger if you could muster up some phraseology that was a bit more personal and a bit less like the talking points from the campaign. Although you may wholeheartedly agree with their approach (or you may work for them and not want to stray from the script), you'll find that there are ways to make the same points using your own words.
I'm an Obama supporter, and I certainly would like to see his net favorable rating higher than it is here or in the Rasmussen, but I found McCain's numbers to be the most surprising.

These results are so different from the results of EVERY other poll this week that the numbers for Obama and McCain are seriously suspect.

I think that there may be some glitch in the wording of the questions or some technical glitch in the way the synthetic voices read the questions to the respondent. If other polls continue to reflect that Obama and McCain both have net positive favorable ratings, I would reject this report as another screw-up by SurveyUSA.

SurveyUSA may just be trying to do too much this year for its internal quality control procedures to keep up with the glitches.

I've become increasingly interested in the "favorable/unfavorable" measurements recently. They appear to be all over the map. And unless I'm mistaken, the IVR-method pollsters (SurveyUSA and Rasmussen) get consistently more negative responses than those that use live interviewers.

It would be interesting to see a comparative analysis of the relationship between "fav/unfav" ratings and vote choice.

I'm not sure whether (a) one approach or the other is more "accurate" and (b) whether the effect is greater for Obama than for the other candidates (suggesting a "Bradley" effect), but it does appear to be consistent.

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